From the debris of her troubled early life, Lidia Yuknavitch weaves an astonishing tale of survival. It is a life that navigates, and transcends, abuse, addiction, self-destruction and the crushing loss of a stillborn child.
A kind of memoir that is also a paean to the pursuit of beauty, self-expression, desire – for men and women – and the exhilaration of swimming, The Chronology of Water lays a life bare.
In the cool, historic sanctuary of Nemi rests the spirit of Diana, the Benevolent-Malign Goddess whose priests once stalked the sacred grove. Now Hubert Mallindaine, self-styled descendent of the Italian huntress, has claimed spiritual rights to a villa at Nemi – a villa with a view to kill. But his protector, the indestructible millionaire Maggie Radcliffe, has withdrawn her patronage – and the supplicant sets out to appease his ancestress. With gruesome results . . .
The New York Times bestseller
Ali Wong's heartfelt and hilarious letters to her daughters cover everything they need to know in life, like the unpleasant details of dating, how to be a working mum in a male-dominated profession and how she trapped their dad.
In her hit Netflix comedy special Baby Cobra, Wong told the world her remarkably unfiltered thoughts on marriage, sex, Asian culture, working women and why you never see new mum comics on stage but you sure see plenty of new dads.
The sharp insights and humour are even more personal in this completely original collection. She shares the wisdom she’s learned from a life in comedy and reveals stories from her life off stage, including the brutal single life in New York (i.e. the inevitable confrontation with erectile dysfunction), reconnecting with her roots (and drinking snake blood) in Vietnam, tales of being a wild child growing up in San Francisco and parenting war stories. Ali Wong's letters are absurdly funny, surprisingly moving and enlightening (and gross) for all.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE TED HUGHES PRIZE 2015
Tabard Inn to Canterb'ry Cathedral, Poet pilgrims competing for free picks, Chaucer Tales, track by track, it's the remix From below-the-belt base to the topnotch; I won't stop all the clocks with a stopwatch when the tales overrun, run offensive, or run clean out of steam, they're authentic and we're keeping it real, reminisce this: Chaucer Tales were an unfinished business.
In Telling Tales award-winning poet Patience Agbabi presents an inspired 21st-Century remix of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales retelling all of the stories, from the Miller's Tale to the Wife of Bath's in her own critically acclaimed poetic style.
Celebrating Chaucer's Middle-English masterwork for its performance element as well as its poetry and pilgrims, Agbabi's newest collection is utterly unique. Boisterous, funky, foul-mouthed, sublimely lyrical and bursting at the seams, Telling Tales takes one of Britain's most significant works of literature and gives it thrilling new life.
More Letters of Note is another rich and inspiring collection, which reminds us that much of what matters in our lives finds its way into our letters. These letters deliver the same mix of the heartfelt, the historically significant, the tragic, the comic and the unexpected. Discover Richard Burton's farewell note to Elizabeth Taylor, Helen Keller's letter to The New York Symphony Orchestra about 'hearing' their concert through her fingers, the final missives from a doomed Japan Airlines flight in 1985, David Bowie's response to his first piece of fan mail from America and even Albus Dumbledore writing to a reader applying for the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts.
Including letters from:
Jane Austen, Richard Burton, Helen Keller, Alan Turing, Albus Dumbledore, Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry James, Sylvia Plath, John Lennon, Gerald Durrell, Janis Joplin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Janis Joplin, Hunter S. Thompson, C. G. Jung, Katherine Mansfield, Marge Simpson, David Bowie, Dorothy Parker, Buckminster Fuller, Beatrix Potter, Che Guevara, Evelyn Waugh, Charlotte Brontë and many more.
Contagious Divides charts the dynamic transformation of representations of Chinese immigrants from medical menace in the nineteenth century to model citizen in the mid-twentieth century. Examining the cultural politics of public health and Chinese immigration in San Francisco, this book looks at the history of racial formation in the U.S. by focusing on the development of public health bureaucracies. Nayan Shah notes how the production of Chinese difference and white, heterosexual norms in public health policy affected social lives, politics, and cultural expression. Public health authorities depicted Chinese immigrants as filthy and diseased, as the carriers of such incurable afflictions as smallpox, syphilis, and bubonic plague. This resulted in the vociferous enforcement of sanitary regulations on the Chinese community. But the authorities did more than demon-ize the Chinese; they also marshaled civic resources that promoted sewer construction, vaccination programs, and public health management. Shah shows how Chinese Americans responded to health regulations and allegations with persuasive political speeches, lawsuits, boycotts, violent protests, and poems. Chinese American activists drew upon public health strategies in their advocacy for health services and public housing. Adroitly employing discourses of race and health, these activists argued that Chinese Americans were worthy and deserving of sharing in the resources of American society.
The ancient world saw the birth and collapse of great civilizations. In mainstream history the Classical world is dominated by Greece and Rome, and the Biblical world is centred on the Hebrews. Yet the roughly four-and-a-half thousand years (4000 bcad 550) covered in this book saw many peoples come and go within the brawling, multi-cultural mass of humanity that occupied the ancient Middle East, Mediterranean and beyond. While a handful of ancient cultures have garnered much of the credit, these forgotten peoples also helped to lay the foundations of our modern world. This guide brings these lost peoples out of the shadows to highlight their influence and achievements. <br/> <br/>Forty-five entries span the birth of civilization in Mesopotamia to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, offering an alternative history focusing on the names we arent familiar with, from the Hurrians to the Hephthalites, as well as the peoples whose names we know, such as the Philistines and the Vandals, but whose real significance has been obscured. Each entry charts the rise and fall of a lost people, and how their culture echoes through history into the present. Important ancient artefacts are illustrated throughout and fifty specially drawn maps help orientate the reader within this tumultuous period of history. Philip Matyszak brings to life the rich diversity of the peoples founding cities, inventing alphabets and battling each other in the ancient world, and explores how and why they came to be forgotten.